Monday, May 24, 2010

(This post is part of our series on tracking hedge fund portfolios. If you're unfamiliar with tracking investments they disclose via SEC filings, check out our series preface on hedge fund filings.)

Next up is Andreas Halvorsen's hedge fund Viking Global. Viking employs bottom-up fundamental stockpicking, like most all other 'Tiger Cub' hedge funds. Halvorsen attended Williams College and received his MBA from Stanford and he has previously worked at Morgan Stanley and Julian Robertson's legendary hedge fund Tiger Management. In Alpha's 2008 hedge fund rankings, Viking was ranked #70 in the world. We recently got some insight as to Viking's rationale behind some of their positions in their first quarter letter.

We recently learned that Chief Investment Office David Ott will be leaving the firm. There were originally three founding members of Viking: Halvorsen, Ott, and Brian Olson. Olson left the firm in 2005, Ott is leaving now in 2010 and as such, that leaves Halvorsen as the sole remaining founder. Viking's positions are mixed into the Tiger Cub Portfolio created with Alphaclone where you can replicate the portfolios of some of the top hedge funds around.

The positions listed below were their long equity, note, and options holdings as of March 31st, 2010 as filed with the SEC. All holdings are common stock unless otherwise denoted:

Many of Viking's portfolio moves were previously telegraphed in their first quarter letter. In it, we saw that they dumped Mastercard (MA) and clearly now favor Visa (V) in the payment processing space. They maintain their very large position in Invesco as well. Their letter also revealed that they are quite bullish on shares of Express Scripts (ESRX) in the pharmacy benefit management space. At the end of the first quarter it was their third largest US equity long. We also see that they chopped their CVS Caremark (CVS) position nearly in half, a competitor to ESRX in the PBM space. As we detailed last week, Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital is bullish on CVS.

We take note of Viking's position in CME Group because a few other hedgies were adding shares in the first quarter. We just learned that John Griffin's Blue Ridge Capital also has a sizable stake. Halvorsen's hedge fund also nearly doubled down on their Tyco (TYC) position and brought it up to their fourth largest holding. And while we're on the subject of positions they added to, take a look at Metlife B shares (MET.B) as Viking really added to their stake there. Lastly, we highlight they doubled down on their position in Google (GOOG) as well. We're starting to see lots of hedgies accumulating this technology & internet giant, so that might be worth looking into further considering GOOG is trading below levels where these hedge funds added to their position. Blue Ridge Capital has assembled a large GOOG stake as well.

In terms of positions they sold completely out of, we wanted to highlight Apollo Group (APOL) for a few reasons. Firstly, Viking had this as a 'core' position for a few quarters and so we note their exit. Secondly, we mention this because we're starting to see a divergence of opinion amongst Tiger Cub hedge funds regarding for-profit education stocks. David Stemerman's Conatus Capital had sold out of APOL and other educational plays back in the fourth quarter for a myriad of reasons.

Assets reported on the 13F filing were $9 billion this quarter. Data from the SEC is aggregated and sorted automatically by Alphaclone, our source for hedge fund tracking, replicating, and performance backtesting (Market Folly readers can receive a special free 30 day trial). Remember that these filings are not representative of the hedge fund's entire base of AUM.

(This post is part of our series on tracking hedge fund portfolios. If you're unfamiliar with tracking investments they disclose via SEC filings, check out our series preface on hedge fund filings.)

Next up is Andreas Halvorsen's hedge fund Viking Global. Viking employs bottom-up fundamental stockpicking, like most all other 'Tiger Cub' hedge funds. Halvorsen attended Williams College and received his MBA from Stanford and he has previously worked at Morgan Stanley and Julian Robertson's legendary hedge fund Tiger Management. In Alpha's 2008 hedge fund rankings, Viking was ranked #70 in the world. We recently got some insight as to Viking's rationale behind some of their positions in their first quarter letter.

We recently learned that Chief Investment Office David Ott will be leaving the firm. There were originally three founding members of Viking: Halvorsen, Ott, and Brian Olson. Olson left the firm in 2005, Ott is leaving now in 2010 and as such, that leaves Halvorsen as the sole remaining founder. Viking's positions are mixed into the Tiger Cub Portfolio created with Alphaclone where you can replicate the portfolios of some of the top hedge funds around.

The positions listed below were their long equity, note, and options holdings as of March 31st, 2010 as filed with the SEC. All holdings are common stock unless otherwise denoted:

Many of Viking's portfolio moves were previously telegraphed in their first quarter letter. In it, we saw that they dumped Mastercard (MA) and clearly now favor Visa (V) in the payment processing space. They maintain their very large position in Invesco as well. Their letter also revealed that they are quite bullish on shares of Express Scripts (ESRX) in the pharmacy benefit management space. At the end of the first quarter it was their third largest US equity long. We also see that they chopped their CVS Caremark (CVS) position nearly in half, a competitor to ESRX in the PBM space. As we detailed last week, Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital is bullish on CVS.

We take note of Viking's position in CME Group because a few other hedgies were adding shares in the first quarter. We just learned that John Griffin's Blue Ridge Capital also has a sizable stake. Halvorsen's hedge fund also nearly doubled down on their Tyco (TYC) position and brought it up to their fourth largest holding. And while we're on the subject of positions they added to, take a look at Metlife B shares (MET.B) as Viking really added to their stake there. Lastly, we highlight they doubled down on their position in Google (GOOG) as well. We're starting to see lots of hedgies accumulating this technology & internet giant, so that might be worth looking into further considering GOOG is trading below levels where these hedge funds added to their position. Blue Ridge Capital has assembled a large GOOG stake as well.

In terms of positions they sold completely out of, we wanted to highlight Apollo Group (APOL) for a few reasons. Firstly, Viking had this as a 'core' position for a few quarters and so we note their exit. Secondly, we mention this because we're starting to see a divergence of opinion amongst Tiger Cub hedge funds regarding for-profit education stocks. David Stemerman's Conatus Capital had sold out of APOL and other educational plays back in the fourth quarter for a myriad of reasons.

Assets reported on the 13F filing were $9 billion this quarter. Data from the SEC is aggregated and sorted automatically by Alphaclone, our source for hedge fund tracking, replicating, and performance backtesting (Market Folly readers can receive a special free 30 day trial). Remember that these filings are not representative of the hedge fund's entire base of AUM.

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